Swedes - Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities.
Preindustriai Sweden was an agrarian country. Farming was the most
Common subsistence activity, always combined with stock raising and
often with forestry, handicraft, trade, and transportation. Farming was
combined with fishing along the coasts and around the many big lakes.
Today agriculture has diminished. In 1990 it employed only 3.3 percent
of the working population. The main agricultural products are dairy
produce, meat, cereals, and potatoes.

Industrial Arts.
Iron ore and lumber are the basic raw materials. Besides lumber, the
modern forest industry produces paper, board, pulp, rayon, plastics, and
turpentine. Sweden also is able to exploit hydroelectric power thanks to
its many rivers with waterfalls. The country has two big car
manufacturing companies (Volvo and Saab), a telecommunications industry
(Ericsson), a manufacturer of roller and ball bearings (SKF), a producer
of household appliances (Electrolux), and a company producing electric
motors, steam turbines, and equipment for hydroelectric power plants
(ASEA-Brown Bovery).

Trade.
About one-half of the industrial production is exported. Iron, steel,
and forest products—such as paper and paper board—are
important as well as different kinds of manufactured commodities,
especially machinery and Transportation equipment. Sweden's
largest export markets are Germany, the United States, the United
Kingdom, and Norway, in that order. Engineering products, cars and other
motor vehicles, machinery, computers, chemical products, fuel, and crude
oil dominate the imports to Sweden. The supplying countries are Germany,
the United Kingdom, the United States, and Denmark.

Division of Labor.
In the old peasant society, cattle raising was female work, while
horses were part of the male world. Threshing was regarded mainly as
men's work, but in eastern Dalecarlia it belonged to the
women's sphere. Women from this area even worked as professional
threshers during seasonal work periods. Textile production has been a
female job, except in Halland, where men, boys, and women traditionally
produced knitwear for sale. The general tendency is that in areas where
agriculture has been a sideline, women have carried out several tasks
that traditionally belonged to the male sphere in typical agricultural
areas. Child labor was usual in preindustrial Sweden as well as during
the first period of industrialization (1850-1900). Children worked in
the sawmills, factories, glassworks, and ironworks. In contemporary
Sweden, ethnic niches have started to emerge. There are restaurants
owned by Chinese, pizza shops, sweet stalls, and small grill-restaurants
owned by immigrants from the Middle Eastern countries. Assyrians and
Syrians are involved in traditional trades such as tailoring and
shoemaking. Together with Kurds and Turks, they also trade in fruit and
vegetables.
Land Tenure.
Before 1827, when a statute on enclosures (
foga skifte
) was passed, the fields of each farm were split up in several small
lots in various places. The agricultural modernization of 1827 meant
that the fields of each farm could be assembled together in a compact
area. These enclosures of land took place during the entire nineteenth
century and changed the countryside radically. At the end of 1940, a new
wave of structural rationalization began with the goal of creating
larger and more productive units. In 1988 only 8.7 percent of
Sweden's land area was utilized for agriculture. The majority
farms are privately owned. An estimated 69.6 percent of the
country's area is covered by forest and woodland. Corporations
and other private owners control at least three-quarters of the
nation's forest land and timbering.